The Perseids fill the dark sky with short streaks of white light, but don’t expect fireworks. “This will not do that,” says J. Kelly Beatty at Sky & Telescope magazine. “The Perseids are not known for fireballs. It’s mostly a steady rain of meteors. If [people are] attuned to the fact that this is something shed by a comet, then that builds a little excitement. If they like looking into the night sky, this will be an exciting thing.”
 
Meteors shoot across the sky all of the time but the Perseid meteor storm is clockwork. Every August, the meteors flare up in the night sky as Earth travels through a highway of rocky litter discarded by the comet Swift-Tuttle.
 
The grain of sand-sized dust particles, traveling at up to 144,000 mph, move so quickly that the friction heats up gases in the upper atmosphere. The glow from the hot gas, not the burning dust particle, produces the streak seen from the ground.
 
To view the meteor shower, grab a reclining lawn chair and strong coffee, sit back and relax. Most meteors will appear between 1 a.m. and dawn local time, though with virtually no moonlight to get in the way, some may be visible at 10 or 11 p.m. The shower lasts all this week, peaking during the pre-dawn hours of Thursday and Friday.